Because there are supposedly rational people (thousands of years of professional philosophers) who give arguments for why that's supposedly the right way to do things — Pfhorrest
Lots of supposedly smart, reasonable people believe some really wacky shit.
SEP also has a list of arguments against hedonism with names if you like. — Pfhorrest
someone who was philosophically unsure could agree in general that people feeling good rather than bad is probably the only thing that really matters, as an end in itself, but be undecided about whether the ends justify the means, or whether we should trust authority, etc. — Pfhorrest
I think my novel contribution to the problem is mostly in taking parts from those different well-known views and connecting them together into a form that escapes their common arguments against each other — Pfhorrest
suppose a starting point of absolute radical doubt where you don't even know what there is to know, or how to know it, or if we can know it at all, or if there is even anything at all to be known — Pfhorrest
there is some such answer or other to whatever question is at hand (because if you assumed instead to the contrary, you'd have no reason to try out any potential answers) — Pfhorrest
Elaborating the chain from those core pragmatic assumptions to every other specific position is what all the text I've already written in all those other threads is for, so I'm not going to repeat it all here. — Pfhorrest
Actually, it is trivially false that all commonly held moral beliefs can be construed as being aimed at minimizing suffering. (I am including the "commonly held" qualification in deference to your social/semantic take on ethics.) Take, for example, the imperative to punish offenders. While it can be argued that just punishment, on the whole, tends to reduce suffering (by way of deterrence, for example), this is not so in every particular case. And in any event, minimizing suffering is not what motivates the imperative in the first place, even if it happens to have that side effect - on the contrary, what matters to those who adhere to it is that the offender does suffer. — SophistiCat
If we survey current and past moral attitudes, we can find plenty of examples of moral imperatives that are not aimed at the reduction of suffering. I take it that Pfhorrest and a number of others would not support such attitudes. — SophistiCat
So people disagree about right and wrong. What else is new? What are we discussing here? What's the point of all these threads and polls? To identify like-minded members? — SophistiCat
Do you think you would be able to summarize your ethical system in 5 or 6 dot points or a syllogism? — Tom Storm
he method by which to conduct that will, to form such intentions, to decide what is good or bad, is to initially think whatever you are just inclined to think even if you can’t name a good reason to, and to agree to disagree with anyone who thinks differently (i.e. to live and let live, to respect liberty), until one of you can show reason — grounded in those criteria above — why someone or other’s intention is bad. That still doesn’t conclusively settle what is good, but it narrows in on it gradually. — Pfhorrest
Maybe this paragraph needs to be in 3 or 4 dot points of itself. — Tom Storm
I understand what you're saying, but the manner in which I meant it is the manner in which your first proposition is undermined by your second. — Isaac
like packing for camping and leaving the poles behind because they're longer than the box you had for the tent. — Isaac
What I'd be looking for, if you still think I've missed the mark, is an example of a moral position which cannot be (not just is not) construed in some super-widened sense of reducing suffering. — Isaac
I mean having accepted that, they don't then question god's instructions on the basis of whether they think he's doing a good job or not. — Isaac
That's self-contradictory. If they were concerned about justifying means and libertarian concerns about authority, then they would be performatively contradicting a belief that people feeling good rather than bad is probably the only thing that really matters. — Isaac
Impossible right off the bat, so anything done from here is going to be a pretence — Isaac
The question could be ill-formed, meaningless or nonsensical. — Isaac
why would you think we'd follow on through the project as if it hadn't happened? — Isaac
But if he is trying to start with widely shared, uncontroversial premises in building up his argument, he has to contend with the fact that, right out of the door, people's moral intuitions aren't in alignment with his principle. — SophistiCat
I said that one could try to argue that retributive punishment is conducive to the reduction of suffering, but it wouldn't be a perfect fit, even extensionally (it doesn't always reduce net suffering), not to mention intensionally (it isn't aimed at reducing suffering). — SophistiCat
Being a naturalist about morality, i.e. believing that moral intuitions and norms are the outcome of biological and cultural evolution, social dynamics, and other such natural factors, it seems reasonable to expect that common moral principles would be at least somewhat aligned with the imperative to reduce suffering. But by the same token, it wouldn't be reasonable to expect the alignment to be perfect. — SophistiCat
Define "suffering".I think I already clarified this earlier, but establishing a scale against which to compare the morality of situations where one end of that scale is nobody suffering and the other end is abject misery for everyone doesn't mean that I expect (who?) to make that good end the case or else (who?) is a criminal or something. It's a scale. It's just how we compare things. Suffering bad. More suffering worse. Less suffering better. No suffering best. It's not a complicated thing. — Pfhorrest
Yes, and "hedonism" can mean so many things, to the point that the term becomes useless.This is my main gripe with any kind of hedonism. It ignores the basic psychological fact that our affects are fabricated, in part, from social cues. Part of why we feel good about some things and bad about others is because we interpret physiological states that way as a result of the models we've learnt from our culture. — Isaac
Kant's ethics make no appeal to divine commands, nor to any experience, but to some kind of abstract reasoning. — Pfhorrest
Just agreeing that people feeling good rather than bad is all that matters doesn't tell you anything about, for example, whether or not it's okay to cause a little suffering now to spare a lot of suffering later — Pfhorrest
whether or not it's okay to cause a lot of suffering for a few people so as to spare the suffering of a disproportionately huge number of people. — Pfhorrest
do you get to take that responsibility into your own hands? Do they? — Pfhorrest
How it's permissible to actually get to that state, and who's responsible for ensuring that that happens, are additional questions on top of that. — Pfhorrest
We can imagine where that might lead — Pfhorrest
I already foresee that you'll reply "What if all moral sentences are categorically like that?" — Pfhorrest
that's why I have an account of moral semantics that defends a kind of cognitivism and explains what moral sentences categorically mean — Pfhorrest
I wouldn't think you would. I would think you would drop out as soon as it became clear that we're not going to reach a resolution on something that will be foundational to everything else to come. — Pfhorrest
I don't think it's worth the time trying to convince you about them — Pfhorrest
I still don't think you're arguing in good faith. (You only ever adopt a position so as to argue against someone else's and never positively endorse any position yourself, making you always playing offense and everyone else always play defense, which is a classic type of bad-faith argument style). — Pfhorrest
Yeah. I know. Move on. — Pfhorrest
Maslow's pyramid of needs comes to mind. Unsatisfied needs to the extreme are painful. — god must be atheist
The social institutes responsible for resolving conflicts about the above process should be non-authoritarian and non-hierarchical, a global cooperation of independent people working together voluntarily; basically a form of anarchism, or libertarian socialism. — Pfhorrest
There are cultural systems where "sense indulgence" can mean a great variety of things, from overeating, getting drunk, to never sitting down or holding up one's arms for years. — baker
There are Buddhist and Hindu dharma teachers who looking at pictures like these would say that those ascetics are practicing "sense indulgence". There are cultural systems where "sense indulgence" can mean a great variety of things, from overeating, getting drunk, to never sitting down or holding up one's arms for years. — baker
What is a social institute? Would that be a school? — Athena
What I'm struggling to understand here is how you're forming an argument that hedonism is the only alternative to "...because X said so", yet also arguing that alternative philosophies exist which do not amount to "...because X said so". If Kant's framework relies on reason - ie, only act according to that which you could at the same time wish were a universal law (or something like that), then it seems that the only two conclusions you could draw from that are either a) there exists a non-hedonistic means of judging that which is moral that does not amount to "...because X said so", or b) morality captures more than hedonism and no matter how accurate your measurement of it you'd be missing something if you didn't also measure 'reasonableness' (or somesuch). If you agree that Kant's moral philosophy is based on something no-hedonic, yet also non-authoritarian, then your argument about hedonism being required in order to avoid having to resort to "...because X said so" falls apart. — Isaac
If that were an issue then temporal nearness or hyperbolic discounting would also 'matter'. Something else other than feeling good or bad would matter - how far removed the feeling is in time. — Isaac
Again, that just means that something else matters. Here it's the number of people who share in the pleasure/displeasure. That's unarguably something else mattering other than just whether people feel good or bad. — Isaac
Questions which cannot be judged on the basis of reducing suffering. Yet they're still moral questions. One of them even contains the term 'permissible' as you've phrased it. The other implies permissible behaviour (who ought to judge and who ought not). If you're denying that these are moral questions, then on what grounds? If not then there are clearly moral questions which cannot be resolved by reference to hedonic values. — Isaac
Once more, now something else matters - justness of personal responsibility. Just good/bad are no longer all that matter, but additionally the rightfulness of the authority of the judge. — Isaac
Is it? what would be the 'bad' in that approach - It seems again to confuse a discussion forum with your personal blog. The entire point of posting something on a discussion forum is as a topic for discussion (critical, if need be). To say that people who then discuss such an offering are doing so in bad faith is really weird. — Isaac
Which I've no doubt already disagreed with, you've already claimed I'm merely misunderstanding you on, and thus you use, as if flawless, as a prop... I'm only trying to see if the argument has more to offer than "these are the things I think". One of the reasons your posts bug me - and you're not the only one - is that this a public forum. Forum being the key word. It's not your personal blog, you can publish that yourself anytime you like, curate responses if you want to, edit, or not, as you see fit. But here is not the place to do that. Here is a forum for public debate, we're here to discuss, not accumulate a database of "stuff people on the internet reckon".
That you think your account of moral semantics "defends a kind of cognitivism and explains what moral sentences categorically mean" is utterly irrelevant here. Great material for your personal website. Publish it, stick it on YouTube, shout about it on your street corner... whatever. But here what matters is what other posters think it defends or explains. It taken as given that you think it does, that's presumably why you posted it. If you publish it here then it becomes the topic for debate, we're not your editors, nor your peer review board. We're not to be dismissed with "thanks for the input but I don't agree so your services are no longer required" — Isaac
As above, why on earth would I do that? The aim is not to reach a resolution on something such that if that's not possible the project might as well be abandoned. What you're doing is the conversational equivalent of ignoring your interlocutors with "yes, that's all very interesting, but stop interrupting...now, as I was saying..." — Isaac
It's really not about convincing me of anything. Again, we're a discussion forum, we're not a policy think tank either, we don't have to come up with the answer any time. It's about having a decent amount of respect for weight of human thought that's previously gone into these issues. — Isaac
Move on to what? You seem to be confusing the forum with a Gallup poll now. "here's my idea", "I agree", "I disagree", "great discussion guys...next". The argument about moral realism probably extends to several hundred thousand pages in philosophical literature...and it's still not resolved. Do you expect Rosalind Hurthouse to object to Robert Louden’s 'application problem' criticism with a paper just entitled "Yes, I get it, you don't agree, move on!" in which she just complains about his constant interjections that non-virtuous agents cannot learn virtue without rules? Of course not. and the debate already spans several thousand words. We've barely exchanged more than couple of hundred on this, yet a handful of posts in you're already wanting to shut down the discussion and move on as if it never happened. You put the ideas out there ostensibly for debate, but you don't seem at all interested in getting into the debate, you just want a quick round of applause so you can move on to post the next in your grand edifice for the same purpose.
We're here to discuss. The issues with your theory (as yet unresolved) are as good a topic as any, there's no good reason at all to 'move on'. Hell, we still haven't 'moved on' from debating Platonic realism and that debate started 2000 years ago. You've fundamentally misunderstood how philosophical discussion works if you think a couple of exchanges is a good reason to ignore the issues and carry on regardless. — Isaac
The point of that Russell quote on that topic I quoted earlier is pretty much that in doing philosophy, we're always going to start out appealing to some intuitions people have, and showing that other of their intuitions are contrary to the implications of those. If we're doing it well, we'll pick deeper, broader, more fundamental things, the rejection of which would be even more catastrophic, as premises, and show that other less foundational but still common views are incompatible with those, for our conclusions. — Pfhorrest
Now that's an interesting difference. I was speculating that one could capture the extensional features of retributive justice in a sufficiently wide definition of 'suffering-reduction', only that to do so would be trivial as the definition thereby allowed would be so wide as to just be synonymous with 'morally bad' anyway. Am I right to think you're suggesting here that no such definition could be made of even the extensional features alone? — Isaac
If so, what features of retributive justice do you think fall into that category? I tried thinking along lines of your example of ensuring the perpetrators suffer, but even then could frame that as easing the suffering of the victim by schadenfreude. — Isaac
Two common critiques of Kantian ethics are, on the one hand, that it does actually appeal to hedonistic criteria even while it claims it doesn't (Mill himself argued that), — Pfhorrest
You've not quoted a single philosopher who doesn't agree with the basic points you take as premises here. That suffering (when assessed hedonically at the affect level, and in the long term, recognising that it might change over time, and including future generations, plus an afterlife if there is one, including any 'higher' senses like art and music and love...) that long and complicated definition of 'suffering' is a bad thing and we shouldn't impose it on others. Find me a philosopher, scientists, any public academic who disagrees with that. — Isaac
My total ethical view is the intersection all of my four core principles as applied to ethics. Phenomenalism is one of those principles, and applied to ethics that's hedonism. Universalism is another one of those principles, which narrows in to only a specific subset of hedonism. Criticism and liberalism are two more principles, which narrow in on an ever more specific subset of hedonism. — Pfhorrest
What makes your argument style bad faith is that you don't seem to be engaging in a cooperative pursuit of the truth with anyone, since you never even state what your own stance is, much less look into whether or not it might be right. — Pfhorrest
Looking for ways that a position might be wrong is not in itself bad faith, but if you're just here to tear other people's views down no matter what they are, and (act as though) you don't actually have any views of your own and aren't engaging in the same figuring-out-what-might-be-right mission as others — Pfhorrest
It is a common assumption that as an institution, criminal punishment serves to deter crime, but that is actually a questionable thesis. It is far from clear whether, how much and in what circumstances punishment has that effect. And what about private, non-institutional retribution? — SophistiCat
Well, one could say that doing what one believes is right satisfies an "appetite" and thus falls under the hedonism, but I wouldn't want to interpret Pfhorrest so uncharitabl — SophistiCat
And how can you argue that some moral beliefs are broader and more fundamental than others? How can you even argue that there is such a hierarchy of moral beliefs without assuming your conclusion at the outset? — SophistiCat
Then why on earth did you bring it up as a counter-example to the claim/query... — Isaac
...which seems to bring even more ethical positions into the fold. I'm struggling to see who you're arguing against here with the specific point you raise. — Isaac
The point is the likes of Botha and DeClerk do not claim to disagree with universalism, they claim multiple contextual details which support their policies. — Isaac
You seem to have two contradictory narratives going on with regards to the process of discussion in this context. — Isaac
If there's an observation which doesn't fit right at the heart of your theory, resolving that should be priority number one. And, most importantly, you thinking you've resolved it is completely irrelevant because that's just more of your observations. — Isaac
Is it really any wonder that people are concerned about an authoritarian overtone to this 'find a objective which matches everyone's hedonic feelings' when we can see exactly what happens to the observations of those that don't match your pet theories — Isaac
Kant denies the accusation — Pfhorrest
In this case, it's liberalism vs authoritarianism — Pfhorrest
we should be here because we're interested in figuring out what it is — Pfhorrest
nobody is obliged to prove themselves right — Pfhorrest
You seem to be here just to throw a supposed burden of proof at anyone who dares to have any opinion and shut them down — Pfhorrest
you don't seem like you just want to know what people think and why they think that, you seem like you want them to 'know' (to accept your judgement) that they have no good reason to think it and should therefore shut up. — Pfhorrest
we're only exchanging thoughts about things, not verifying actual empirical experiences. — Pfhorrest
in practice, it's not worth the effort of trying to figure out how I might just not be "replicating your observation" properly; you claimed to see something, I looked, I didn't see it — Pfhorrest
Say I'm doing something that effects only me — Pfhorrest
encouraging others to share it — Pfhorrest
A school is a kind of social institute, but in this case I was referring to a government, though I do draw parallels between education and governance in my overall philosophy. — Pfhorrest
So one might argue against hedonism by saying that suffering can actually be character forming and so focussing on virtues would better capture that. You'd respond (actually have responded, in fact If I recall) that 'character building' just ensures a greater lack of suffering in the future, and so virtue ethicists are not capturing anything here hedonism cannot account for. the virtue ethicists themselves would obviously deny that, but you don't take their denial as as indicator that their position is not actually hedonic — Isaac
Same would be true there too. I bet both would be able to frame their approach as libertarian, allowing people to be as free as possible - just their definition of 'as possible' would contain restriction they think necessary but we don't. — Isaac
The only way round this that I can see is to make the argument that the pursuit of 'truth' is an internal quest, one in which the opinions of others don't figure. But then you'd undermine your narrative where the forum acts as a joint quest. — Isaac
Yet you want also to say that if I don't present my theories for analysis I do fall foul of such a requirement. I can't see the difference. — Isaac
Where have I even suggested anything of the sort. — Isaac
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.